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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The marines refer to themselves as “bug stompers” and have the motto “we endanger species” painted on their shuttle. Therefore, insectoid life is canonically rather common in the setting, and/or the marines are openly genocidal (meaning “bug” is a slur and they’re turbo-racist to the point of delusion). I forgot about that detail on the side of the dropship, good call.
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Apr 6, 2023 18:46
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Quick question; ya'll actually like the movie, right? Can you just talk about the stuff you do like, instead of being turbo- about samples, camera angles hiding collection (for gently caress's sake, it happened, we didn't see it, use your imagination for a second), or whatever other dumb poo poo there's walls of text about? Because, let's face it, the Alien 3 Assembly Cut is loving awesome.
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Apr 6, 2023 19:09
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Leave posted:Quick question; ya'll actually like the movie, right? Can you just talk about the stuff you do like, instead of being turbo-  In fact I think I’m going to watch it for Alien Day this year. Unfortunately my aging surround sound system finally poo poo the bed and I can’t afford to replace it yet, so I’ll be slumming it with my TV’s speakers. 
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Apr 6, 2023 19:36
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Payndz posted:If you watch the video, she's clearly not touching it, just hovering the tweezers above it (as she was in the closeup where you can see them, and a subsequent medium shot where she's holding clean, open tweezers). A film doesn't have to be shown in 3D to provide a sense of where objects are in relation to each other. The tweezers are LITERALLY obscured behind the head in that shot. You do not know that contact is not being made, unlike in the gif you posted. However, the gif you posted is actually pretty instructive. Let's say we watch whatever movie that is, and then debate the question: are the streets behind Daniel Craig being swept? The answer is yes. There's a street sweeper, and he's sweeping the streets. He's not doing it very realistically, but you know what else is unrealistic? That we can't see Daniel Craig's right hand or legs. Where are they? I'm supposed to believe that he's just hovering there??? We could pivot to making fun of the director for doing a half-assed job, or we could vibe with the movie using more impressionistic means to depict city life, or whatever, but what we CAN'T reasonably do is postulate that Craig's character lives in a world unlike our own in which street sweepers are all telekineticists or wizards. Xenomrph posted:No really, I’ve told you multiple times that a second scan would be sufficient for me, feel free to stop hiding behind logical fallacies and trying to project what would or wouldn’t be sufficient for me, I’ve full on told you what the answer is. Hey, hey, hey, my wording is very precise there: if you were emotionally invested in the characters being dumb, two scans would not be enough for you. As far as I can tell, you're not, and you simply think the scene did a bad job of depicting due scientific diligence. To your credit, though, you also clearly understand why it might do a bad job of depicting due scientific diligence: that would eat up extra screen time and defuse the tension of the scene, making it less cool. Now, I still stand with my claim that even requiring (as opposed to, I don't know, vaguely preferring) two scans is not a strong position. It rests on the hidden assumption that their one scan isn't good enough to penetrate the helmet, which isn't confirmed or denied by anything in the film's dialogue or visuals. Remember, the ability to scan for "contaminants" is already basically magic from where we're sitting; I'd kill for a wand I could wave around that would beep and turn red if it detected any flu or COVID in the air, but the technology just isn't there. So if they've got a machine that can rapidly a volume of space for anything dangerous to breathe in (as emboldened Charlie earlier in the film) we might as well grant that that machine can also penetrate X inches of solid matter where X is greater than the helmet's thickness. But, either way, my real criticism here isn't of you. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Apr 6, 2023 |
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Apr 6, 2023 20:14
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Thanks for the clarification, we’re cool. 
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Apr 6, 2023 20:18
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Characters in horror movies make poor decisions and do dumb things, more at 11.
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Apr 6, 2023 21:20
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Joe Chill posted:Characters in horror movies make poor decisions and do dumb things, more at 11. It's only okay when Kane sticks his face in the suddenly open alien egg every other time is bad movie-making.
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Apr 6, 2023 22:04
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I'm a bit busy today!DeimosRising posted:i'm getting the impression that you don't pay very close attention to the things you write Ferrinus posted:No, you don't. Here's the image again: Ferrinus posted:I say "yes", since they have both ample reason and opportunity to do so. Ferrinus posted:"shoot electricity into a head until it exploded" is just facially wrong. Its writer, if they expected to be taken literally, was confused about the words "shoot" and "until". Ferrinus posted:It's simply not a unique sample. They got it out of a giant pile of bodies Ferrinus posted:This isn't functionally different from just leaving my text out of quotes in your previous posts. poo poo or get off the pot! Ferrinus posted:(Hey, do the characters in Prometheus use the bathroom?) Ferrinus posted:Well, this is the crux of the matter, isn't it? Ferrinus posted:You basically have to decide for yourself here whether their decision to open it anyway should be read as a sign that they possess, and have faith in, highly-advanced technical equipment, or that they're ridiculous clowns. Ferrinus posted:When making that judgment, though, you do have to take into account: did anyone or anything get contaminated after they did that? Huh, they didn't, okay then. Splicer fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Apr 6, 2023 |
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Apr 6, 2023 22:56
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I miss smg
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Apr 6, 2023 22:59
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Splicer posted:That's not what that says! Yes it is. Your complaint, to paraphrase myself from elsewhere, is that you're too slow on the uptake; even though you have a functional and fully-coherent theory of the movie, you're mad that 20th Century Fox didn't warn you about it ahead of time. quote:It's very clear when in motion! No, it's not. Shaw's entire motion keeps part of her hand and the business end of the tweezers behind the head. This means that she is, right there and then, collecting physical samples from the head using her tweezers. That's why she has tweezers and her fellow doctor has a scraper. I don't really see how you get out of this one. quote:Projection! Your reasoning has consistently been that since they're smart they must be doing the smart things offscreen, and since they're doing the smart things offscreen they must be smart! Meanwhile I just watched the film and thought wow, these people do a lot of dumb things on camera! Guess they're dumb! Well, remember, "a lot of dumb things" is actually a lie. They don't do a lot of dumb things. Of all the dumb things you claimed they did in the very scene we're discussing, you basically had to discard the rest and zero in on whether or not they collect skin samples before performing their experiment, because everything else the characters do scans perfectly well. You've decided ahead of time that they're dumb, but can't really find major or obvious dumb things that they do, so you have to squeeze their dumb-ness into the narrow space between different shots, into areas of each scene that the camera isn't showing us because there are physical obstructions in the way. You're asserting, with adamant faith and increasingly manic punctuation, that Shaw is wearing clown shoes beneath the bottom of the frame. quote:"it didn't explode OF electricity shot into its brain it exploded WITH electricity shot into its brain" This is also wrong. There was no electricity being shot into its brain when it exploded. They turned off the electricity well before the explosion. That's why your use of the word "until" is inaccurate. Now, you can be a breezy goofball who plays fast and loose with their language because they're trying to be funny, or you can do finnicky line-by-line dissections of character actions within individual shots, but you can't do both. quote:This is a very stupid comparison and I grow more embarrassed for you every time you use it! I think you grow more embarrassed because you can't answer it. But, if you prefer, you can answer the broader point I made to you several times, that you pretended not to see, that actually showing us the samples being taken on camera would actually harm the narrative thrust of the movie, since it would set up a Chekov's Gun situation with some alien skin samples that the rest of the script doesn't have the time or inclination to fire off. quote:It's the "stupid" one because "sterile" and "licing tissue" are antonyms! It's got some kind of rapidly-metastasizing skin cancer. There are no contaminants present because Shaw and Vickers and the rest of them were breathing the same air as was circulating around the bubbling, distended head for a good minute or two and walked away with zero negative consequences. Remember, we know what it looks like when someone does get contaminated with the alien mutagen in Prometheus; Charlie had worms crawling in his eyes and eventually collapsed into dust. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Apr 6, 2023 |
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Apr 6, 2023 23:06
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I want to add as an aside that especially in the COVID era there is definitely room in the zeitgeist for a sci-fi thriller/horror movie that's all about airlocks, gas masks, indoor filtration, etc. in which a lot of the tension comes from characters either strictly maintaining or being lax with protocols relating to hermetic seals and air quality. Such a film would use a lot of screentime and camera focus to establish the kinds of safety protocols that are effective against airborne contaminants and how those protocols might fail us or be subverted. Prometheus is just not that movie. Now, it would be an extremely cheap, lame, and annoying twist if, in Prometheus, characters were lax about keeping their helmets on, didn't bother sealing alien artifacts behind multiple glass walls and forcefields, etc, and THEN all contracted the alien virus by breathing it in. What were you expecting, morons?! But that doesn't happen. It's just not important to the narrative; people get mutated or die because of class antagonism, not personal inadequacy.
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Apr 6, 2023 23:30
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Ferrinus posted:No, it's not. Shaw's entire motion keeps part of her hand and the business end of the tweezers behind the head. This means that she is, right there and then, collecting physical samples from the head using her tweezers. That's why she has tweezers and her fellow doctor has a scraper.
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Apr 6, 2023 23:38
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Payndz posted:I was going to note that you can see her tweezers in another shot like five seconds later and they're open and clean, but drat, son, these walls of angry contrarian text are making you seem like SMG's third clone, and that's not an Alien Resurrection reference. So peace out. That's enough time to scrape them into a tube. If it boggles your mind that the scientists don't take samples before applying the electricity, you can rest easy, because they can easily be taking samples in that time. Just because something isn't shown on screen doesn't mean it doesn't happen; it just means it's not important enough to use precious runtime on.
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Apr 6, 2023 23:41
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Ferrinus posted:Well, remember, "a lot of dumb things" is actually a lie. They don't do a lot of dumb things. Of all the dumb things you claimed they did in the very scene we're discussing, you basically had to discard the rest
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Apr 7, 2023 00:17
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Neo Rasa posted:It's only okay when Kane sticks his face in the suddenly open alien egg every other time is bad movie-making. Well, I mean, it’s dumb but it’s in-character with Kane’s inquisitive nature (earlier he says “we must go on, we have to go on!” or something to that effect when they’re trekking towards the Derelict). Somewhat more dumb is when obviously-shady David (I mean, he stood up for a Neomorph and freaked out when Billy Crudup shot it in like the very prior scene) coaxes clearly rattled and untrusting Billy Crudup into sticking his face in an egg in Covenant. Neither is bad movie-making, although Kane is more believable than Billy Crudup.
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Apr 7, 2023 00:25
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describing events on the screen = angry contrarian text that's almost as good as the goon talking about enemy posts.
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Apr 7, 2023 00:29
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ruddiger posted:describing events on the screen = angry contrarian text
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Apr 7, 2023 01:02
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The tool that electrifies the brain also takes samples at the same time. I read it on an officially licensed Denny's placemat.
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Apr 7, 2023 01:04
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Splicer posted:I thought the point was that the things happening on screen weren't as important as things that are definitely happening just out of screen, laughing too. You're the person who's attributing importance to the samples being taking (just out of screen). Personally, I think the exploding head is more important. Schwarzwald fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Apr 7, 2023 |
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Apr 7, 2023 01:12
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Leave posted:Quick question; ya'll actually like the movie, right? Can you just talk about the stuff you do like, instead of being turbo- It’s absolutely wild that somebody would lie about a movie in the age of instant streaming, and then resort to slowing the tape down like it’s the Rodney King video to prove that it’s not a real alien onscreen. But if that’s not interesting enough for you, here’s a thumbs-up emoji that registers my like of movies: 👍
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Apr 7, 2023 02:09
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:But if that’s not interesting enough for you, here’s a thumbs-up emoji that registers my like of movies: See, this, I like. Can I get a 👍 or 👎 about the Assembly Cut?
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Apr 7, 2023 02:11
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Leave posted:See, this, I like. Can I get a 👍 or 👎 about the Assembly Cut? No.
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Apr 7, 2023 02:20
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Leave posted:Quick question; ya'll actually like the movie, right? Can you just talk about the stuff you do like, instead of being turbo- The 3D was literally the greatest I’ve seen. Better than avatar. Just gorgeous and immersive.
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Apr 7, 2023 02:48
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If we don't enjoy the movies and posting about them it's hard to explain this threadXenomrph posted:Well, I mean, it’s dumb but it’s in-character with Kane’s inquisitive nature (earlier he says “we must go on, we have to go on!” or something to that effect when they’re trekking towards the Derelict). Captain Oram is a dumbass with self esteem issues, but in his defense David has appeared as an enigmatic saviour (rescuing and sheltering his surviving crew, displaying power over the terrifying fauna of this place, speaking in riddles, being charming, etc) and Oram's rattled by all the death (including his wife!) so he's desperate for the answers that David claims he has. Similar to Shaw, I don't think it's so much that Oram fully trusts David; more that the droid represents their only way out of the incredibly dire situation they've found themselves in, and the possibility of making their suffering meaningful. They're both characters that share Peter Weyland's philosophical/theological questions and desire to answer them. To their credit they seem genuine whereas Weyland is fronting, pathetically motivated solely by his fear of his own mortality. Oram + Shaw's only real failure is their expectation that The Meaning of Life (tm) is to be found outside somewhere, and not within. Blood Boils fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Apr 7, 2023 |
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Apr 7, 2023 03:14
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As for Aliens: I have pretty much zero EU knowledge (and am fine with that) but I never really understood the Marines as having any expectation of actually seeing any aliens whatsoever. When Hudson complains about 'another bug hunt', I didn't think it meant that they are actually veteran alien-killers, but that they are sometimes forced to go looking for things that generally don't exist. I took the decal on the dropship to be ironic, rather than them actually being proud alien-murderers who kill lots of aliens all the time. I don't think the Bug Stompers decal has to mean Extreme Racists or Elite Bugfighters, but can just be a loving joke, because they are clearly kind of burnt out and dismissive of their entire mission. They haven't had any fights against aliens, but they've been called in before before when some panicky colonist saw a big rat or freaky fungus. Since it's the very specifically American marines I assumed the Aliens future posits a galaxy in which other nations also have colonies and space militaries and the Marines are equipped mostly for murdering humans from other states or killing terrorists/freedom fighters etc. As I saw it, Ripley's story is officially labelled as crazy, and none of them are particularly interested in it. If they actually believed they were facing a monster that is bigger than a man and definitely eats people and has acid for blood, you figure some of them would be keen on interrogating her details. Sure, Hudson is a jackass, but others are portrayed as competent in their jobs and who actually care about the troops, like Apone. Apone doesn't take her seriously either and seems disbelieving of her entire story. Until the Marines actually arrive in the colony and see some freaky stuff they have no actual expectation of meeting any alien resistance. They are there to fix a broken radio tower and hopefully get laid. I can see Burke also taking that stance and telling Gorman that this lady is crazy but we're taking her anyway just to cover our asses with the insurance folks or whatever. Why is Gorman in charge? Because there is zero expectation of alien resistance. If the Marines actually expected to invade a colony full of vicious alien bastards, there would be all sorts of high ranking brass balls officers dying to get a shot at going toe to toe with the little green men for America. They would not let some freshfaced butterbar have the extreme honor of blasting aliens in a standup fight. If they expected aliens they'd send way more than 15 guys and officers would be falling all over each other to be included in this mission. They sent Gorman with a tiny force because they really do think it's just a lovely transmitter, and that is the best scenario for Burke because he wants to erase his own blame + get out with something profitable. Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Apr 7, 2023 |
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Apr 7, 2023 03:51
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Mr. Grapes! posted:I can see Burke also taking that stance and telling Gorman that this lady is crazy but we're taking her anyway just to cover our asses with the insurance folks or whatever.
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Apr 7, 2023 03:55
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Leave posted:Quick question; ya'll actually like the movie, right? Can you just talk about the stuff you do like, instead of being turbo- Honestly, the very scene folks have been turbo- about is genuinely excellent. The announcement that this weird dinosaur-mollusk carapace is a helmet, followed by David unlatching it and opening it up like an oyster shell to expose a human head for a pearl, is a tremendous bit of uncanniness.Xenomrph's assumption that the scientists are trying to bring it so they can speak with it is also not completely out of the blue, since visually the scene calls back to Alien '79 where Ripley and Parker "trick" Ash's dismembered head into "thinking it's alive." Only where in that film the reveal was that presumed human was an android, here it's that the presumed creature is human (or close enough). Of course, what separations there are between android or human or engineer dissolve (literally, violently) in death. How abhorred in the imagination it is! And if all that is not enough, I've recently been made aware that the scene also features some tweezers.
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Apr 7, 2023 04:02
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Xenomrph posted:Somewhat more dumb is when obviously-shady David (I mean, he stood up for a Neomorph and freaked out when Billy Crudup shot it in like the very prior scene) coaxes clearly rattled and untrusting Billy Crudup into sticking his face in an egg in Covenant. Oram isn't "clearly untrusting" because he behaves in a way that is trusting: he sticks his face in the fungus and gets turned into freakish skeleton-monster. The way that Crudup plays the scene is as if he's entranced - and this goes back to the psychosexual horror of Alien where there's clearly far more going on that just Kane being inquisitive. Like, "gosh, gee, I wonder what's inside this egg-thing. Oh, whoopsie-doodle!" These characters are drawn to it. Schwarzwald posted:Xenomrph's assumption that the scientists are trying to bring it so they can speak with it is also not completely out of the blue, since visually the scene calls back to Alien '79 where Ripley and Parker "trick" Ash's dismembered head into "thinking it's alive. That is misinterpretation of the scene, though, because the head couldn't possibly speak without lungs attached. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Apr 7, 2023 |
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Apr 7, 2023 04:22
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CelticPredator posted:The 3D was literally the greatest I’ve seen. Better than avatar. Just gorgeous and immersive. The 3D from Prometheus that I remember the best was the bit where Shaw gets caught in the storm and David has to rescue her, that was fantastic. Mr. Grapes! posted:As for Aliens: Even as far back as my first viewing of the movie (when I was wayyyyyy too young to be watching stuff like that) I assumed the Marines had encountered complex extraterrestrial life forms, but nothing as dangerous as the capital-A Alien. “Another bug hunt” is exactly that: being interstellar exterminators dealing with space-rats and space-coyotes and space-termites, stuff that the colonists can’t handle on their own. “We endanger species” is literally true. Naturally, the EU leaned into it (more so the Leading Edge RPG, a very small number of comics, the short story anthology, and the modern RPG). The universe isn’t brimming with intelligent sentient races like Star Trek or Star Wars, but indigenous life definitely is A Thing. That doesn’t mean there aren’t a handful of intelligent races in the EU, it’s just that they’re either long-dead or way off in some corner of the galaxy and humanity never encounters them. Off the top of my head I can think of…. nine? ten if you want to count Predators; the new RPG doesn’t. And of those, two are long dead, four have never encountered humanity, two are reasonably primitive and don’t have space travel, and they’re also the only two that humanity has had encounters with, and one of those is the Arcturians that Frost mentions. The new RPG describes the Arcturians as being very-near-human (and another race that the Engineers created).
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Apr 7, 2023 04:32
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Xenomrph posted:The new RPG describes the Arcturians as being very-near-human (and another race that the Engineers created). Their entry on Xenopedia makes them sound way weirder than one had imagined, but it's the nature of RPGs especially to often take the goofiest options possible.
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Apr 7, 2023 04:54
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So, what is going on with the exploding head? It's already been thoroughly established that these people have really wild scanning technology, down to the ability to 'read' people's dreams and view them as a little cheesy video. Though the head isn't hooked up to a dream-reader (though that might have been a cool idea at some point), the purpose of the test is obviously just to jump-start electrochemical activity in the brain so that they can scan it with their future-EEG. Entirely mundane stuff, really. Because I love to explain a joke, though, the joke of the scene is that "tricking the nervous system into thinking it's still alive" actually causes it to become alive. It's not a simulation of life in a soulless object; the head appears to be in genuine agony and confusion. But, besides this joke, the scene also provides characterization for everyone's third-favorite Prometheus character: the black goo! Because, if you think about it, the goo remained entirely dormant until neuronal activity occurred. It reacts to human psychology - in this case, translating the incomprehensible pain of the head into an explosion of slime.
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Apr 7, 2023 05:10
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Splicer posted:Nope! I picked one at random from the list and you went completely insane and started arguing about invisible samples! Okay, first off, of the two of us, only one started responding to the other a sentence at a time and ending each of their sentences with an exclamation mark. I don't think you have the standing to claim that someone else is going completely insane. But this sub-discussion started with my pointing out that the head explosion experiment actually went completely fine. The danger was spotted well ahead of time and neatly neutralized, no one was hurt or sickened, nothing irreplaceable was lost, and perfectly usable samples remained to be scanned for whatever technobabble the characters were interested in. It was basically a complete win, except that the characters themselves were briefly scared and nervous during the experiment because something unexpected happened. So you, completely at a loss for ways to refute any of this, are like okay yes that's all true, BUT, they didn't take samples! I mean they obviously did take samples and the samples were completely sufficient to their purposes, but they didn't take samples BEFORE the electricity which proves they're not among the Elect! Except they did and you can see the shots in which it's happening. Since this has been pointed out to you too many times to easily ignore you're giving up. And to that I say: owned. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Apr 7, 2023 |
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Apr 7, 2023 05:20
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Dawgstar posted:Their entry on Xenopedia makes them sound way weirder than one had imagined, but it's the nature of RPGs especially to often take the goofiest options possible. Some backstory, the old Leading Edge RPG had “Arcturians” as a race that player characters could encounter if they went to the Arcturian planet. They were decidedly nonhuman, I don’t think they had any technology, it was hard to tell their genders apart, and hey, your Marine PCs can gently caress ‘em if they want to. The author of the new RPG thought that was a little too close to bestiality, so he re-wrote the “Arcturians” as being very fuckable androgynous sapient near-humans, but he still kept the old RPG’s description and just made them a separate (non-fuckable) race, the Arctura. Maybe over the weekend I’ll compare the old and new RPGs. Edit— Yeah Xenopedia differentiates between the two, and includes the old RPG’s description just for curiosity’s sake. https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Arcturian https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Arctura Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 06:00 on Apr 7, 2023 |
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Apr 7, 2023 05:53
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It figures that the EU would over-explain Arcturians. I figured it was just like a seedy space station or something where gender fluidity was a thing and Marines on shore leave could get freaky, kind of like Bangkok. Not that these Marines were literally having sex with alien species. I took it as more that this is a Vietnam movie in space and these dudes are just ragging on each other for loving ladyboys or whatever.
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Apr 7, 2023 06:15
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Well I mean, yeah it’s pretty much meant to be Vietnam in space Ultimately I’m not bothered by the way the new RPG handles it
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Apr 7, 2023 07:22
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The USMC edited the wiki to cover up the truth that they're all sexually exploiting a bunch of insectoid E.T.s. Arctura/Arcturian is obvious bullshit.
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Apr 7, 2023 07:39
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http://i.imgur.com/Q9Fdv3r.gifv
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Apr 7, 2023 08:31
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:So, what is going on with the exploding head? Because there was a head on a table in Alien and a medical scan scene too! Watch the Prometheus scene again, and then the Kane part in the medbay, and holy poo poo its like watching a kindergarten play version of the other.
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Apr 7, 2023 09:31
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sounds like a badass kindergarten
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Apr 7, 2023 09:37
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Well... https://youtu.be/srDVrEwPdg4
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Apr 7, 2023 10:37
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